My 4 year old was punched in the head by an autistic 13 year old - a discussion...

FREE BEER.

Now I have your attention.

JayZ750. I think you handled the situation reasonably well under the circumstances. I especially wanted to commend you for starting this discussion - hopefully there was something helpful for you, and at a minimum it gave the rest of us (or the majority anyway) the opportunity to consider how we might handle a similar situation should we find ourselves in that spot.

There are no easy answers here, but one thing we can all do is to contribute to or volunteer for an autism related charity. I would like to suggest Alex's 5-K, a charitable run that supports a number of autism related charities, both local and national. (Full disclosure, Alex was the son of two good friends of mine and Alex died at 17 of autism related issues). There is a 5-K race, a 1k kids fun run/walk, great long sleeve techncial t-shirt, age group awards, door prizes, great food including homemade rice and beans, FREE BEER (St. Arnold's) and the satisfaction of knowing you helped a good cause.

The race is November 5, 2016 at McGregor Park. More info here:

http://alex5k.com/

[edit] While there are no guarantees, I want to point out that in the past all of the costs of the race have been covered by sponsors and volunteers. ALL of your race registration fee will go to charity if at all possible. Thanks!

 

So your response would be to cause a scene and more violence? Please don't go out.

 

I have no kids, so one piece of advice would be to get contact info. I wouldn't sue them, but hopefully it would make them more vigilant.

If I had a 4 year old and that happened, I'd probably be in jail.

 

FREE *CRAFT* BEER here

Didn't think it was appropriate to tell this story yesterday.

I once dated a girl who had a 11-year-old boy with severe autism. Once, when she had the flu, I volunteered to take the boy to school. Me and the kid always got along, so I figured it wouldn’t be a big deal.

Before leaving, she warned me not to detour off the route they take every morning, as the boy didn’t like that kind of change. On the way, I saw a wreck ahead that was slowing traffic, and reflexively detoured on to a side street. That’s when all hell broke loose. I didn’t even think the kid was paying attention. I mean, the whole way there he was in the backseat content with counting the buttons on his shirt.

Now he was screaming “FOUR STOP LEFT STOP TWO RIGHT STOP!” at the top of his lungs while grabbing and kicking the back of my seat. I desperately tried to turn around, but kept getting deeper into the neighborhood. He is now sounding like a wild animal; his screams nothing but a garbled mess of incoherent words as he struggled against his seat belt to, undoubtedly, claw my eyes out.

I had already started panicking and had opened my door in case I had to jump out of my moving vehicle. I was positive the kid was about to bust out of his restraint using the super-human strength only bestowed upon chimpanzees and the mentally disabled.

But like a miracle, I had somehow navigated back on to the original road. At that exact moment, he immediately calmed down and went back to counting the buttons on his shirt. I breathed a shaky sigh of relief when I heard him say, “I’m a winner, you’re a bad driver.”

So I looked back to make sure his seat belt was still securely fastened, and took another side street.

Was that wrong?

 

I think most of us here understand that it's not the kid's fault, and as someone put it more eloquently, it's probably better not to assign any blame to this situation.

But RR brings up a good point about the possibility of more physical damage. That kid is only going to get bigger and stronger. Autism will prevent him from learning consequences like a normal human? If his mom takes him to the store at 16 and he punches a 2 year old, not only will the problem be about the victim's father's reaction, but also about the potential damage the autistic child can inflict.

The mother is in a horrible position, but a 13yr old punching 4yr old children is unacceptable. Again, not a blame game, and many of you have explained how accidental and uncontrollable the situation is. It's still unacceptable, and at the edge of dangerous.

 

An analogy--not to say this is of the same seriousness or anything, but just to say that even if you remove the autism-aspect from the situation, it still results in the same "sucks for everyone / no winners" mentality. If this is of no help, then I apologize--posters like Nick and Deckard on p1 already said what I think:

Spoiler

If you're in a car at a stoplight, and get rear-ended by someone going 40mph, you're going to be SUPER pissed. If your head/neck aren't f'ed up, you'll get out and yell at someone. But if you find out it's because the brakes were faulty and didn't work properly (yes, that stuff still happens to people--I've seen it), you might at least understand.

It sucks for everyone, you feel bad for the other person a little (they owe a ton of $ for something out of their control), you feel bad for your reaction given it wasn't entirely their fault, you're a little pissed at them for not getting their car checked more often (but how could they really?), and your reaction was still justified given the information you had at the time. At least you didn't break a bat out and go threatening the other driver.

I feel bad for you and the other family and am glad your kid is ok. As with numerous things that happen to all of us, it could have been so much worse...really glad when it isn't.

 

It really seems like everybody in this thread is on the same page, so why do I feel like I just read through the comments section of a Yahoo political article?

 

I think you genuinely don't know enough about autism. I would read up about it if I were you, it will probably make you feel a LOT less irritated with the situation.

He could punch people at home. He could punch people in a clinic. He could punch anyone and anything out on the street even if a trained medical assistant was with him. Just like anyone. You have friends who have gotten in fights. We don't tell them to stay home, we just work on their anger issues, right?

There is no argument whatsoever for the kid not going out. We don't isolate people from society because they MIGHT hurt someone. We do it when we know they have or for sure WILL hurt someone. Just like with other kids in schools, experiencing the hurt associated with punching someone can be the catalyst to change minds. Autistic kids learn, autism does not imply an inability to learn. He must go out to get better. We must educate people a million times more on how to deal with people of various mental make ups. He's not a "puncher", and I feel like your mind is making you feel like this incident is reflective of him.

The parents and guardians haven't done anything wrong, I'm not even sure why an apology is needed. What I do feel was needed was for them to ask you or your son if he's ok, and help in any way needed if the little guy is hurt. Surely, they should feel compassion for your kid getting punched.

Also people read each other. Just like you read that they were not apologetic enough, they read that you were more expecting of an apology than someone would typically be in that situation. A situation which you've been in once while they've been through this a few times maybe I suppose.

Her mother was crying because her son is autistic and she has to apologize for him and see people looking at her son like he's a menace. She didn't choose this life for him and our societies are so ****ed up towards autistic kids that everything she needs to do to help him includes the real unavoidable possibility of situations like this one. She deals with that everyday. Her choices are to watch him deteriorate at home or risk situations like this outside. Frankly, I would have been in tears if I saw the mother crying, but admittedly that's because I have a lot of experience with autistic children and their parents.

Great to know your kid is fine. I know I wouldn't know how to react either if I were in your place.

 

Excellent story. four and a half stars.

 

Man, no matter what happens there really can't be any winners here. Sad story, glad your kid's okay.

The thing I keep going back to is, if the 13-year-old's condition is such that the family's response to his outbursts is essentially weary resignation, it seems inevitable that at some point he's going to need to be placed in full-time assisted living. If you're a parent, at what point does one make that call?

Or is this behavior that one can realistically expect a person with autism to grow out of?

 

If he's that unstable...enough to smash another much smaller child in the face and the mom is unable to stop him from doing so, he shouldn't be in public. That's just my opinion. Imagine how much worse he'll be as he gets older/stronger. There comes a point where you can't keep telling yourself, "well, he needs to be out among people and get use to them" bc according to you, he'll never learn that hurting other small children is wrong...his brain doesn't work like that...it just takes one insignificant trigger and he goes Mike Tyson on little Timmy.

I feel for the mother...it's got to suck knowing that you put all that time and effort into carrying, birthing, and raising a child who will never be able to be a productive member of society or have any kind of normal life, hell, he'll never be able to provide anything to the mother when she gets too old to care for him anymore. She certainly has it rough, but...

I don't think she should be bringing her kid out in a heavily populated public place like that as he's clearly a danger to society. Again, one day he's going to hit a toddler who's father is much less level headed than JayZ...it's just a matter of time. JayZ is not wrong to expect a sincere apology from this lady immediately after her son hit his small child. It's basic manners; the fact that she has an autistic child doesn't exclude her. Her initial callous apology gave her the appearance that she didn't really care what her child did, like, "oh well, he's special needs, it happens"...that's not cool.

 

One of my associates has a twelve year old austistic girl, she kicked her pregnant teacher in the stomach with such force that caused a miscarriage. This little girl once hit me in the head so hard I had a big knot and a massive headache for a week. Don't ever under estimate the strength of these autistic children, they can wreak havoc even though they don't know what they're doing. OP did say it was an enormous 13 year old.